Free Republic

Norman Pishny is a soft-spoken former farm boy who loves nothing better than puttering around his 40-acre spread in south Johnson County. But the 53-year-old financial planner — and hundreds of others like him who cherish their bucolic lifestyle — feel threatened by Overland Park. The city wants to annex 15 square miles and extend its borders nearly to Miami County, the largest expansion in the city’s 47-year history. Hundreds of angry landowners, including professional golfer Tom Watson, have packed hearing rooms in the past several months to tell the city the “land grab” is arrogant and robs them of...

Poll results released late Tuesday show most Ohioans favor a smoking ban that exempts bars, bowling alleys, private clubs and restaurants that reserve separate rooms for smoking. The Ohio Licensed Beverage Association polled 600 voters and found Ohioans would reject a total smoking ban by a 52 percent to 46 percent margin. But a majority of those polled support a modified ban, and 62 percent believe business owners should be allowed to determine their own smoking policies. Locally, the city of Centerville implemented a smoking ban that went into effect last spring. Except for a handful of bars, restaurants...

Christopher B. Leinberger is a man on a mission - a real estate developer who is building to reclaim the past. When not spearheading an ambitious redevelopment of downtown Albuquerque, N.M., he crisscrosses the country, trying to sell builders, planners and the public on converting the nation's sprawling, car-addicted suburbs into more compact, walkable communities - like the neighborhood he grew up in outside Philadelphia. At stake, contends the silver-haired, Santa Fe, N.M.-based developer, is nothing less than our personal health, and that of the planet. "The way we're building our suburbs presents such difficult problems," Leinberger said yesterday, as...